Jan 29, 2008 8:12 AM

Bush Praises Skin to Stem Cell Breakthrough in State of the Union

President Bush’s much-anticipated mention of stem cells in last night’s State of the Union address isn’t likely to change anyone’s mind about the research or his policies. As you may have heard, scientists believe embryonic stem cells (ESCs) may be able to cure everything from cancer to Alzheimers. Unfortunately, getting them involves destroying an embryo […]

President Bush's much-anticipated mention of stem cells in last night's State of the Union address isn't likely to change anyone's mind about the research or his policies.

As you may have heard, scientists believe embryonic stem cells (ESCs) may be able to cure everything from cancer to Alzheimers. Unfortunately, getting them involves destroying an embryo -- and to get personalized versions, you'd need an embryonic clone of yourself.

Critics say this is murder; supporters say that delaying potentially life-saving research because of concern about pinhead-sized blastocysts is what's really murder. President Bush has tried to walk a line between the two, limiting federal research funds to ESC lines created before August 2001. As a result, progress has slowed, though pioneering work has still been done in non-federally funded labs.

Meanwhile, researchers have tried to make ESCs that won't provoke culture war bottle-throwing. The most promising of these techniques was unveiled in November, when scientists reprogrammed adult cells to act like their embryonic counterparts. Religious conservatives hailed these as a conscience-clean replacement, but the cells are still too unreliable for medical use. Nearly everyone actually involved in stem cell research, including those troubled by embryo destruction, says that ESC research is still necessary.

Enter President Bush and last night's State of the Union address:

On matters of life and science, we must trust in the innovative spirit of medical researchers and empower them to discover new treatments while respecting moral boundaries. In November, we witnessed a landmark achievement when scientists discovered a way to reprogram adult skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells. This breakthrough has the potential to move us beyond the divisive debates of the past by extending the frontiers of medicine without the destruction of human life.
So we're expanding funding for this type of ethical medical research.
And as we explore promising avenues of research, we must also ensure that all life is treated with the dignity it deserves. And so I call on
Congress to pass legislation that bans unethical practices such as the buying, selling, patenting, or cloning of human life.

In short, nothing unexpected. Both sides will applaud the expansion of reprogrammed cell research, then regroup on their side of the debate.

As for the appeal to Congress, everyone agrees that reproductive cloning -- think Mini Me -- is wrong. The real controversy involves therapeutic cloning -- the sort required to produce customized embryonic stem cells, in which the clone is destroyed after a few days. This puts such legislation squarely back in the culture wars.

Add a dollop of standard legislative jockeying, and you've got the
assorted cloning bans that have kicked around Washington for the last decade, with none ever quite making it into law.

Of some interest, though, is the President's passing reference to the
"patenting ... of human life." When it comes to intellectual property claims on the human genome and assorted human biotechnology techniques, the horse left the lab a long time ago. But maybe the President plans on using his power to mandate some kind of copyleft-crazy new age of biotech?

If anything could make this whole debate more complicated, that would be it.